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The top 10 per cent of pensioner households, who receive an average of £47,992 gross, saw 29 per cent of their income going in direct and indirect tax, in line with the proportion seen by average households.

Pensioners have been badly hit by the longest double-dip recession since quarterly records began in 1955, as high living costs and low interest rates have eaten away at their savings.

A study by Aviva earlier this month
found that saving pots for the over-75s had almost halved in the last
two years, to just under £13,000.

The
Aviva report also highlighted a 'concerning' finding that almost a
quarter of people over 75 had a credit card debt they did not repay in
full on a monthly basis, despite the fact they were likely to have
retired a decade earlier.

Costly: The typical retired household pays almost £6,000 annually in taxes ranging from council tax and income tax to fuel duty and the TV licence

Analysts also said that recent rounds of quantitative easing had made more than a million pensioners worse off, by driving down annuity rates, which set the size of a pensioner's income for life.

Eddie O'Gorman, of investment specialists the WAY Group, told the Daily Express: 'This is one of the most vulnerable economic groups in our society.

'Surely they should be getting better tax breaks rather than being hit for high levels of taxation at a time in their lives when they can least afford it.'

Tom McPhail, head of pensions research at investment brokers Hargreaves Lansdown, said: 'With pensioners set to form an increasing proportion of the population and with the Treasury struggling to balance its books, it wouldn't surprise me to see pensioners' tax burden increasing in the years to come.'